Cuba libre?

While the Cuban economy has developed into an odd socialist/capitalist hybrid that is stretching its limits, its complex political system has seen no comparable evolution.

It is not, at least on paper, a classic one-party system in the Chinese or Soviet mold.  According to its loyalists, the Communist Party does not choose candidates or exercise executive authority.  Its role is supposedly to “oversee” the government, with concern about corruption or other abuse of power avowedly its top priority.  Certainly it keeps an eye on things and brooks no organized political opposition at the national level.  Public political discourse is about continuing, perfecting, improving, enhancing and polishing the Revolution, not reversing or even modifying it.

The system does provide for complaint and criticism, especially at the local level.  Cubans elect neighborhood representatives, supposedly without reference to membership in the Communist party, who in turn elect municipal representatives, who in turn elect provincial representatives, who in turn elect the national parliament and the council of state, which elects the president.  All the elections are purportedly non-party contests.  This elaborate system of cascading indirect elections obviously allows for a good deal of centralized control.  But it also allows a measure of initiative.  Loyalists believe it provides ample opportunity for citizens to express themselves and argue their cases.  Dissidents would laugh at that proposition.

No one expects any major political change before the Castro brothers are gone from the scene.  Neither Fidel nor Raul is seen much in public these days.  Nor does the visible cult of personality focus mainly on them.  Pictures of the eternally youthful Che Guevara and the equally immortal Camilo Cienfuegos, admired for his humility, are more common.  Jose Marti, the nineteenth century leader who fought the Spanish, is omnipresent.  Still, the Castros cast a long but no longer loquacious shadow from behind the walls and hedges of their estates in Miramar.

Once they are gone, no one has much idea what might happen. In our stay in Cuba last week, we observed no sign of organized political opposition, but I confess we didn’t seek it out either.  I didn’t want to put anyone in danger, including myself, by ill-considered contact.  Many Cubans, including the security services, will have seen “Bringing Down a Dictator,” a documentary about the fall of Milosevic in which I appear repeatedly as a commentator.  The closest we came to hearing the voice of dissent was a woman who said both her well-educated children had left for Europe and did not want to return despite the recession there.  “We have hope,” she said, “but that’s all we’ve had for 55 years.”

She did not say what she had hope for.  That seemed a common phenomenon.  A Cuban painting observed in a private collection expressed the feeling well:  it showed a massive demonstration surrounded by high walls.  The demonstrators held signs with nothing written on them.

Cubans know how the rest of the world lives, despite the loyalist media.  We listened to Miami FM radio in a car outside Havana, and a loyalist told us 80% of the music young Cubans listen to is American.  They are not shy about expressing dissatisfaction in private. Like Mario Comte, the detective anti-hero of Leonardo Padura’s masterful Havana series, they see the seamier side of things and want to hold miscreants responsible, but they  see no viable proposition for systemic political change.  Asked about a multi-party system and more direct election of political representatives, many Cubans shrug indifferently.  They like the opening of economic opportunity they have seen in recent years, but don’t know what might open up their political system.

One wise loyalist told us Cubans would certainly want to keep the goals of social justice and security.  He thought only slow change likely.  No one wants to propose an end to free education and health care.  I’ll regret the passing of the day when a tourist can walk day and night in poor neighborhoods of Havana without fear of anything more than restaurant hawkers flashing menus.  But the decline of the Cuban peso relative to the convertible peso (CUC) is doing something Marx talked about, but in reverse.  The state is withering away, not to some communist utopia but rather under pressure from the capitalist sector of the economy.

It may not be long before Cuba, like Vietnam or China, is socialist in name only, authoritarian but weirdly disconnected from a society defined mainly by the unrestricted capitalism of its energetically entrepreneurial citizens. The internet–available to Cubans and tourists only at high prices and rare outlets today–is supposed to arrive within weeks on Cuban cell phones.  The crowds lined up outside the telecommunications company are at least partly due to people signing up.

Still, Vietnam and China, both of which are connected to the internet, maintain one-party control over political power.  That’s what the Castros will never give up.  But they have the advantage of their revolutionary mantle, broad social consent and decades of instilling fear, which is declining markedly.  Both brothers are in their 80s.  Who knows what their successors will be able, willing, or compelled to do?

On my way back into the US, a Customs officer in Miami asked about the purpose of my visit to Cuba.  I replied that I was studying the prospects for peaceful democratic transition.  He smiled broadly and said that was great.  “I’m Cuban,” he said with the lilt so common in Miami, and waved me in without a peek at the paperwork American visitors to Cuba have to fill out to satisfy US government regulations.

More on that in a next post on Cuba’s international situation.